Black Coffee
by miasnape
Summary: It's under the sink in an old Magnum PI lunchbox, said a voice before the line went dead. How do you think David always knows where to find Greg's coffee? A very short ficlet about our favourite caffeineobsessed lab tech.


**Author: miasnape**

**Title: Black Coffee**

**Fandom: CSI**

**Pairing: None; Friendship fic.**

Genre: Humour

Rating: G

Warnings: None

Summary: _"It's under the sink in an old Magnum PI lunchbox," said a voice before the line went dead._ How do you think David always knows where to find Greg's coffee? A very short ficlet about our favourite caffeine-obsessed lab tech.

Disclaimer: None of the things that belong to other people belong to me. Anything that belongs to me may also not belong to me, but as I'm not making any money out of this, we'll not investigate that too deeply. Everything is relative anyway and, let's face it, no one's reading this bit.

**Author's Notes: It's well known for Hodges-Fic-lovers everywhere that David can sniff out Greg's Blue Hawaiian coffee no matter where it's hidden. Ah, but how? The unanswerable question gets answered.**

**Black Coffee**

David needed coffee. He'd been needing coffee for a while, but he'd been busy enough to put it off. Now, though, he had time to take a break, and he wanted coffee. Needed it.

His phone rang. Sending silent praises up to the gods on high, David snatched the phone out of its cradle.

He would have answered with a snappy, "Where is it?" but, unfortunately, he worked for a branch of an official public service. For all he knew deep in his soul that it was his informant, it could well be someone needing life-or-death information.

"Trace; Hodges speaking." His voice was getting a bit ragged and, life-or-death or not, he needed coffee, so he wasn't going to waste time being polite.

"It's under the sink in an old Magnum PI lunchbox," said a voice before the line went dead.

Slamming the phone back into the cradle with a malicious smirk, David whirled out of his lab towards the break room.

Nick and Warrick were there, but he didn't really care. His ability to go in and find Greg's coffee within seconds was legendary throughout the lab. He walked straight over to the sink, opened the cupboard doors, crouched down and quickly located the lunchbox under some dishtowels.

He pulled it out, set it down, and flicked the catches. He opened the lid with the type of reverence usually seen on movies where the next second the character was bathed in light from whatever they had just discovered. He lifted out the bag of coffee grounds triumphantly and made his way to the machine.

Warrick and Nick started laughing as he measured the grinds into the machine. He looked around and saw Greg standing in the doorway, utterly confused.

"How does he do that?" Greg asked Warrick and Nick, bewildered. The CSIs just shrugged, still smiling.

"I've told you before - I'm psychic. I have a sixth sense for caffeinated beverages of an acceptable standard," David said, resealing the bag to the wonderful sound of the coffee machine bubbling and frothing. He tossed the bag back into the lunchbox and closed it up before handing it all to Greg.

"Classy lunchbox, by the way," he said, sarcasm eating through his words like acid.

Greg's eyebrows furrowed and he pouted. David hadn't known before he'd met Greg that grown men pouted.

"I'll catch you out one of these days," Greg promised him.

David just smirked and poured some of the heavenly smelling brown ambrosia into a mug. "Sure you will. And one of these days Grissom'll become an exterminator."

Archie wandered into the room. "I smell David's coffee," he said.

Greg crossed his arms protectively around Tom Selleck's metal face, holding the lunchbox to his chest. "It's not David's coffee - it's my coffee."

David sat down at the table while Archie walked over to the coffee pot. "You keep telling yourself that," he said, before taking a much-needed drag of his drug of choice. Archie snickered.

Warrick and Nick stood up, each putting a hand on one of Greg's shoulders, guiding him out of the room. "Come on, Greggo," Nick said, "back to work."

Greg turned his head back once to glare at the two techs drinking his very expensive coffee, before heading off with his co-workers.

"He's going to figure it out eventually," Archie told David, sipping from his mug.

"He won't," David said confidently.

Archie glanced up at the security camera perched above the door to the room. One of its cables traced its way back to the A/V lab and connected to one of his computers.

"If you see something every day, you don't really see it at all," David said.

Archie shrugged. "If ready-made Blue Hawaiian is my payment, a few clicks of the mouse and a slight invasion of privacy is nothing."

David smirked. "Welcome to the Dark Side."

END


End file.
